Want to do American Studies? Begin Here!

One of the best resources for educators on the Web is the Open Educational Resources Commons there you will find a plethora of curriculums for virtually every subject including American Studies. One of the best resources I’ve found for Our American Studies course is a series of lectures or MOOC by Michael Cohen at the University of Berkeley. He begins the series with the question “What is Culture and why study it.” His opening exercise where he asks his students to go out and get culture is one we adopted at the beginning of our course to great success. You can see our students blog posts here. Cohen’s way of doing American studies very much jives with our own pedagogy and we used different segments at different times. For anyone looking into adopting an American Studies curriculum or exploring modern American history and culture from an American Studies perspective this is a must watch. You can also find podcasts of these lectures on Itunes U and Youtube. Highlights include a discussion of films Modern Times, Scarface and Birth of a Nation. For those interested in the history of public higher education, don’t miss the teach in broadcast lecture 14.